For Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to obtain Hamas’s consent to a ceasefire Wednesday, Nov. 21, Israel made certain concessions. The most damaging was acceding to Egypt’s role as truce monitor and arbitrator between itself and Hamas and the address for complaints of violations, misunderstandings and brokering future negotiations for regulating future relations. By this step, Israel accepted Egypt’s superior authority and demoted itself to an equal footing with a terrorist group, Hamas.

Jerusalem, Cairo and Gaza awaited US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's arrival Tuesday night, Nov. 20, to clinch the Gaza ceasefire accord. Israel held back from approval until then and the Palestinians stepped up their missile blitz. debkafile’s analysts say that by giving in to international pressure for a ceasefire – against the objections of top military chiefs and intelligence pros - Israel’s leaders would show they have not learned from their predecessors’ mistakes in ending two wars inconclusively.

Missile alert sirens sounded across Greater Tel Aviv Saturday, Nov. 17, before an explosion caused by Iron Dome’s interception of one of the two rockets incoming from the Gaza Strip against Israel’s largest conurbation for the third day in a row. The second rocket landed harmlessly on open ground.
Hamas claimed to have launched Iran-made Fajr-5 long-range missile against Tel Aviv. The Iron Dome anti-missile battery was deployed for the first time in Greater Tel Aviv that morning,

Knowing that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt had egged Hamas on to launch a major missile offensive against Israel, the Netanyahu government took the precaution of getting US backing before launching Israel’s counter-offensive to degrade the terrorist group’s rocket capabilities.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has sent a come-hither signal to the Lebanese Hizballah Shiite extremists raising fears in Washington and Jerusalem that the New Egypt is being drawn into the most radical Middle East orbit.

The Palestinians fired 50 rockets from Gaza Wednesday night, Nov. 14 - of which Iron Dome intercepted 17 - after an Israeli air assault killed the Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari and destroyed dozens of missile sites. The rockets were fired at Beersheba, Ashdod and Eshkol, causing no casualties. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi did not issue a statement on the Israeli operation, but recalled his ambassador from Tel Aviv and said Cairo would ask the UN Security Council to stop “Israeli aggression.”

Obama is keen on Muslim Brotherhood collaboration in the war on al Qaeda and other terrorists, including those sponsored by Tehran, and offered to build a hi-tech security radar fence to defend the Suez Canal from the terrorists and smugglers infesting Sinai.

CIA director David Petraeus arrived in Cairo to lead a new anti-terror campaign against al Qaeda in cooperation with Egyptian security. It was launched after the discovery that Ayaman al-Zawahiri has set in motion a new wave of terror after reconstituting his old Egyptian Islamic Jihad and turning Sinai into his hub of operations.

Israeli, US, Egyptian and Jordanian counterterrorism agencies are on elevated alert since Oct. 25, debkafile reports: Salafi and al Qaeda cells in Egyptian Sinai are said poised to unleash coordinated terrorist attacks on US and Egyptian targets in Sinai and in Israel to avenge Israel’s targeted killing of two senior commanders of the Salafi-al Qaeda Sinai-Gaza network. Perpetrators of the Benghazi murders of 4 US diplomats are among the jihadi reinforcements coming in from Libya.

Al Qaeda-led Salafi Bedouin bands Sunday, Sept. 16, expanded their Sinai offensive to three Egyptian bases along a 70-kilometer front three days after they overran the US-led Multinational Force base in northern Sinai. Heavily-armed Islamist gunmen struck Egyptian bases at El Arish, Rafah opposite the Israeli border and Sheikh Zuweid, where they used local schoolchildren as human shields and shot down an Egyptian helicopter. Egypt has imposed a blackout on all three episodes. Hundreds of US MFO officers remain trapped in their Sinai base.

Washington is no longer under the illusion that positioning US forces in up to18 places in the Islamic world can quell the mounting wave of anti-US Islamist protests now encompassing 21 countries. The unrest poses Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and fellow regimes with a hard choice between expanding their ties with the US - or bowing to violent radical Islamist pressure to turn their backs on America and give them a place in government. The Arab Spring and President Obama’s outreach to Muslims are going up in smoke.

First reports of at least 4 peacekeepers hurt when scores of Salafi Bedouin linked to al Qaeda stormed the Multinational Force’s camp in northern Sinai with grenades, mortars and automatic guns Friday, Sept. 14. The 1,500 mostly US troops are posted in Sinai to monitor the Egyptian-Israeli 1979 peace accords. This was the second al-Qaeda-instigated assault on a primarily American target in the Middle East in four days after the murder of four US diplomats in Benghazi Tuesday. The incident is still ongoing…

To keep the truce with the Islamist terrorist groups in Sinai in place, Egypt is releasing dozens of jailed Salafist gunmen every few days in batches, so feeding them a steady supply of reinforcements. Cairo is also in negotiation with Bedouin tribal elders to grant a body of 6,000 Al-Qaeda-linked Salafi gunmen the status of an approved, independent militia. Armed with up-to-date Egyptian weapons, this militia is to be charged with responsibility for maintaining security. Israel is taxed with a new headache in the south.

As Morsi scrounges for crumbs from affluent world leaders to ease Egypt’s economic distress, he runs up against a Salafist fatwa banning international credit on which interest is payable as a violation of Muslim tenets.

Al Qaeda missiles struck Kibbutz Kholit opposite the Egyptian-Gazan-Israeli border junction and an IDF post in the Kissufim district Monday, Aug. 28, debkafile reveals, in line with the terrorists' tactic of holding Israel hostage as a lever for bending Cairo to their will. The IDF communiqué omitted to mention those attacks - only the Qassam rocket targeting Sderot that morning. Al Qaeda’s affiliates timed their strikes for derailing talks the Egyptian defense minister and army chief held Monday with Sinai Bedouin chiefs.

Israel has asked the Obama administration to intervene with Cairo for the removal of Egyptian tanks deployed in Sinai without permission, fearing they are there to stay. This issue has become tangled up in broader issues: President Mohamed Morsi hints that substantial US economic aid is the key to the tanks’ removal, the launch of a major Egyptian offensive on al Qaeda-linked Sinai terrorists and his refusal of an invitation to visit Tehran. Israel has posted an Iron Dome battery in Eilat against more missile strikes from Sinai.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has set up house in Sinai and Gaza, dedicating itself to attacks on Israel. The Egyptian army’s big counter-terror offensive shows no signs of taking off, although its M-60 tanks looking like having come to stay on the Israeli border.